A private transfer, a shared shuttle, and a prestige transfer are not the same booking

A private booking is one vehicle for one party, and nobody else gets in. A shared booking is sold by the seat on a fixed departure, where two or more separately booked parties ride the same van, boarding and leaving at different stops. A prestige booking looks like private — one vehicle, one party, nobody else combined onto it — except the vehicle has to be a specific class, a luxury car rather than whatever is free. Three sets of rules, one afternoon.

Dispatch software that was built around one trip per vehicle treats all three the same, which means a dispatcher has to remember by hand which jobs are allowed to double up, which van still has enough available seats for a shared booking, and which bookings require a luxury vehicle. Get it wrong once — seat a private client's booking into what turns out to be a shared run, or put a prestige job on whatever van is free — and the client finds out before the dispatcher does.

Each booking carries a service tier, and the tier decides how it travels. Private and prestige bookings get a run of their own; shared bookings ride together on a timetabled departure, with seats sold against its available capacity and pickup and drop-off stops defined along the route. Before assigning vehicles, the dispatcher can see which bookings are allowed to combine.

Prestige bookings are matched to the required luxury vehicle class, rather than simply assigned to the next available car. During the high season, ski and resort operators sell seats on shared departures that run to fixed timetables. The dispatch board shows all three booking types on one screen, with each kept within its own service rules.